Trade-Offs in Crop Production: Yield and Quality, Resource Use Efficiency, and Environmental Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Achieving sustainable crop production requires balancing trade-offs among yield, quality, resource use efficiency, and environmental sustainability. High crop yields are essential for meeting global food demand, but they often come at the expense of reduced crop quality and the increased consumption of resources, such as water, fertilizers, and energy. Conversely, optimizing resource use efficiency and improving environmental outcomes may sometimes limit yield potential. For example, reducing nitrogen fertilizer application can mitigate environmental issues like water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions but may also compromise crop yield and quality. Innovative agricultural practices, including precision farming, advanced breeding techniques, and sustainable nutrient management, etc., offer promising solutions to balance these trade-offs. For a paper to be included in this Special Issue, the research must involve field experiments, preferably with inter-annual repetitions. For tank or pot experiments, yield-related factors must have at least two years of repetition.

Prof. Dr. Junfei Gu
Dr. Kuanyu Zhu
Dr. Weiyang Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.